Carlos Sainz, on the edge for Top 10 in Free Practice 3 at German GP

Low-drag configuration for the Toro Rosso

Hockenheim, July 30th 2016.- The third and last final practice for the German Grand Prix finished with Carlos Sainz in eleventh place. The proximity to the Top 10 positions promises a very tight fight to make it to Q3 in this afternoon's Qualifying session. This precisely will be Carlos' goal.

Today, Toro Rosso decided to change the aerodynamics of the STR11 by using a low-drag rear wing. Carlos' work was divided between the soft and the supersoft Pirelli tyres. He first used the yellow one, on which he completed two stints (seven and six laps). Finally, he went for the softest compound and did six laps on it. On the first of them, he set a 1'17"028 that gave him the eleventh final place. Ninth was only 112 milliseconds faster than Carlos and this confirms how equally fought Q3 is going to be.

After jumping out of his car, the Spaniard driver was cautious:

"We are there. We need a little bit more, but we know where that is. We suffer in long-straight circuits, in power-demanding tracks. We tried to lower the drag from the rear wing; our wing is almost identical to the Monza one. That's not the ideal thing for here, but this way we can win Top Speed. Q3 seems difficult. Force India has quite a big gap, even McLaren has a gap over us. We may be able to fight the Williams, but it's not going to be easy".

He doesn't expect any further aerodynamic set-up changes for the weekend. "We will stay with this configuration unless it rains now or tomorrow, which is now more likely. But if it stays dry, the normal thing would be to stay with this set-up to try to defend ourselves in the race".